ABSTRACT
As rhetoric and events of the recent Gulf War and its aftermath pointedly illustrate, for Americans, the word “Vietnam” is much more than the name of a country or of a war fought years ago. In fact, American film director Oliver Stone (Platoon and Born on the Fourth of July) observed, that Vietnam is a “state of mind”: a moral, political, emotional, and even artistic touchstone for people living through the Vietnam experience in the 1960s and 1970s, at home or on the battlefield. For these “veterans” the word evokes names (Kennedy, Nixon, Ellsberg, Westmoreland, Ho Chi Minh, General Nguyen Giap, Jane Fonda), events (My Lai, 1968 Tet Offensive, 1968 Democratic Convention, the return of America’s POWs in 1973), and powerful emotions (anger, patriotism, confusion, grief, sympathy). For a new generation of Americans not yet born during the Vietnam era or too young to remember the events, the word summons myths, an intense fascination, and many questions. This generation connects with the war often through the numerous Vietnam War movies, survivors’ war stories, continued controversies about Agent Orange and PostTraumatic Stress Disorder, and belated outpourings of support for Vietnam veterans-homecoming parades and pilgrimages to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC.
